Emergent (A Beta Novel) (29 page)

“Let
us
go!” Tahir sneers at Tariq.

“Go!” Tariq manages to gasp. “I’ll authorize the cargo plane evacuating the ReplicaPharm personnel to allow you and Elysia on board.”

Tahir releases his grip. Tariq falls to the ground, struggling to regain his breath. Bahiyya runs to Tariq, dropping to the ground to cradle and kiss her husband’s head. “What have
you done, Tahir?” she exclaims, tears running down her face. “You are like that monster Ivan!”

This is the worst name to invoke to Tahir. “I could never be like Ivan, Maman! NEVER!”

How does one delicately step into a heated family meltdown? One doesn’t do it delicately. “We need to leave!” I command. “NOW!”

But the family is not listening, too consumed by their own drama. Bahiyya weeps, telling Tahir, “You can’t leave. You can’t survive on your own.”

Elysia says it. “We can. We will.” She tries to grab Tahir away. “Let’s GO!”

A lightning bolt from the magenta-pink cloud in the sky strikes the solar panel in the Fortesquieu compound, a direct hit. Before we have a chance to react, the walls and floors rumble. Too
late.

This is the real earthquake. The big one.

“TAKE COVER!” I SCREAM, AND
I rush beneath a piece of wall that had fallen down from the FantaSphere. The house shakes furiously. It sounds
as if a giant freight train is rumbling across the compound, ripping it apart. The floor lifts and then cracks in dozens of pieces as the ceiling caves in.

I see Tahir and Elysia running for cover, but a wall falls behind them, and I can’t see where they’re going, or if they’ve fallen beneath the debris.

I’ve experienced death on the high seas, and it was not nearly as terrifying as this. The shaking goes on for a minute that feels like ten, protracted and agonizing.

When it’s over, I emerge from beneath the crushed wall that had given me cover and see that the ceiling crumbled directly over Tariq and Bahiyya, trapping them. I hear her screams and try
to lift the rubble covering her body. “Tariq is dead,” she moans. “I can feel him against me.”

“I’m trying to get you out,” I say.

“Save yourself,” says Bahiyya. “I can’t go on any longer. Everything precious to me is gone. Let me die here.”

Bahiyya closes her eyes. She’s not dead yet. But she will be any minute. This is her peace. This is how she wants to go, cradling her beloved.

I allow her that choice, and make my own escape.

Breathless, bloodied, and bruised, I navigate my way out of the ruined house and find my way back into the open air. The smoke of fires across the island billows overhead as
the night sky broadcasts the next message. In case there are still any remaining humans left who are deciding whether to evacuate or fight, a bright visual display beams across the dark sky,
showcasing a live aerial feed of the island perimeter. From miles outside Io’s ring, a tsunami is forming. A countdown clock appears next to the feed, giving a ten-minute warning of the
tsunami’s approach to Demesne. The tsunami will wipe out whatever structures haven’t already been destroyed by the earthquake. This land will go back to what it was once. Raw. Wild.

I reach the landing pad. The Aviate is on its side, tipped and crushed by the impact of the quake. Tahir and Elysia emerge from behind the cuvées. They run to me, grabbing me in a group
hug. “You lived!” Elysia cries.

I separate from their embrace. “There’s that. Unfortunately, we’ve lost our escape transport.”

As if the feed of the tsunami in the sky isn’t bizarre enough, an even stranger sight appears: Dementia’s Zeppelin spaceship house. Flying low, it passes over the strip of fallen
cuvée torchflowers, scattering coral-red petals across the air, then lands at the cliff’s edge of the Fortesquieu property.

“Except for the flying house,” Tahir says.

We run to the Zeppelin, a hatch opens, and a rope ladder drops down. Xander climbs down from it, and then at the doorway, two android soldiers appear, flanking the Governor on either side. They
throw him to the ground.

Xander tells us, “I promised the Governor he could kill Elysia.”

I SHOULD BE USED TO
death and destruction on Demesne by now. Is this how the rest of the world is?

We just barely survived a monster earthquake—and now the Aquine is handing me over to the Governor for execution?

“How could you?” I scream at Xander. To be so betrayed when freedom finally, miraculously, looms is an Aquine’s most unexpected, cruel revenge.

“You said you didn’t want my protection,” says Xander. The Governor stands up from his fall and immediately charges toward me, blinded to anything or anyone else in his line of
fire. Xander adds, “But I’m not worried. This one’s my parting gift for you, Elysia.”

Wild winds from the approaching tsunami blow so hard I can barely stand my ground. Zhara screams, but mighty Xander holds her back. “Let Elysia have this one,” he says. “Let
her be so Awful, she is cured.”

I’m not Awful. I’m a coward. I bolt, running away toward the cliff’s edge, while Tahir tries to follow but falls on a piece of debris. “You ruined me,” the Governor
fumes, following me. “Now I will ruin you, once and for all.”

I stop at the cliff’s edge, with nowhere left to hide, taking a last look out over the cliff, trapped. Once, from the cliff at Governor’s House, I dove for freedom, only to find that
leap was just a temporary escape from Demesne. Whatever happens now, I know this is the last time I will have this view over Demesne. I can’t wait for it to be over.

The Governor lunges toward me, and I realize the last gift Xander has given me: equal opportunity. Just as the Governor is about to push me, I step aside. The Governor falls over the edge,
delivering him to the same end he gave Xanthe, his Defect clone. I look over the cliff, just to be sure, watching his body roll down the jagged surfaces, relishing the sound of his screams, until
he lands in the water and his mutilated body floats in the sea. I doubt Io’s soothing waters feel so great when you’re dead.

I’m not
proud
, but my chip does register
satisfaction
.

“Thank you, Xander,” I say.

The sky has turned a dark gray as mighty storm clouds billow in deep purples above, a few shades darker than Io’s violet ripples ringing the island below the cliff as the
Governor’s corpse bobs over its once-soothing waters. Orange fires and black smoke rise across the island. The entire vista is colored in a bruised palette, broken by the broadcast of a
giant, dark blue wall of water moving toward Demesne from deep at sea, miles beyond Io’s ring but moving fast, and rising. It’s like the
gigantes
have formed together and built a
superwave of terror.

Tahir steps up into the Zeppelin as Dementia stands at the door hatch alongside Xander. “Amazing show my future Aquine husband put on tonight, right?” Dementia asks Tahir as she
grins over at Xander.

“That’s one way of looking at it,” says Tahir.

Zhara stands on the ground next to me and offers me a hand to help me up the rope ladder.

“Are you coming?” I ask her.

“I’m staying,” Zhara says. “As soon as you lift off, I’m going with the androids to the bunker below the Fortesquieu house. There’s a tunnel linking it to
Lusardi’s old compound. I’ll find Aidan there.”

I feel weirdly
giddy
. Within minutes, all the properties on this island will likely be washed away. Good riddance. Within hours, hopefully, Zhara will be reunited with her other clone.
The good man whom she loves.

She smiles—my smile, but so much brighter in this moment. “You’ll take care of her?” I ask Zhara. She nods and in these last precious seconds together, our eyes share an
understanding connected directly to our hearts.

“Hurry!” Tahir pleads as the night sky clock rolls to the two-minute tsunami warning.

Zhara makes me one last promise. “Her name will be Xanthe.”

I hug her, and then I climb up the ladder into the strange flying house. Tahir and Xander hastily close the hatch door as Dementia welcomes me. “The Zeppelin wasn’t built for
long-distance travel. We’ll be lucky to make it farther up the archipelago. Don’t worry! We’ll find some pirates to give us passage back to the world. Adventure, Elysia.
It’s yours now!” The Zeppelin lifts off the ground, shaking wildly as I look down through a window to wave good-bye to Zhara.

But Zhara’s already gone, en route with the androids to Aidan and the Emergents and whatever will become of them.

While the Zeppelin flies away, my heart feels
content
and, for the first time,
whole
. I try to steal one last look at Demesne as our vessel bumpily ascends into the storm clouds. A
layer of purple mist quickly shrouds the island, as if protecting our eyes from the Insurrection’s final catastrophe about to happen.

My daughter is down there.

I don’t know what will become of her Beta mother. Maybe I will survive my Awfuls, maybe Tahir and I will find a cure, and maybe we will live long, rich lives in the outside world that my
daughter’s First mother once told me was desolate and tarnished. I don’t know what will become of Xanthe, what she will look like, or what kind of hybrid person she will be. I only know
the one thing I could hope for her, she will have. She will emerge free.

With love and unending thanks to all the amazing and dedicated people at Hyperion, particularly Emily Meehan, Suzanne Murphy, Stephanie Lurie, Simon Tasker, Dina Sherman,
Andrew Sansone, Laura Schreiber, Jessica Harriton. Huge gratitude to the team at WME: Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, Laura Bonner, Alicia Gordon, Erin Conroy, Kathleen Nishimoto, Maggie Shapiro, Caitlin
Moore, Matt Hudson; and to everyone at Depth of Field: Chris Weitz, Andrew Miano, Brenda Vogel, Lindsay Devlin. Thank you so much to all the international publishers for these books. Thank you,
wonderful friends and family, for all the love and support: Patricia McCormick and Paul Critchlow, Norma and Gary Byrne, Jaclyn Moriarty, Melissa Kantor, Megan McCafferty, Melissa de la Cruz, Mara
Cooper, Margie Strohecker and Mike Shaw, Leslie Margolis, Morgan Matson, Jordan Roter, Eva Vives and Pete Sollett, Andi Gitow, Megan Sanders, Anna Orchard, Martha Orchard. Lastly, thank you thank
you thank you, dear readers. I love you all.

RACHEL COHN
is the
New York Times
best-selling author of eleven young adult novels, including
Gingerbread, Shrimp,
and
Cupcake
—and, with David Levithan,
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist
and
Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares
.